Diabetes cases, costs to soar by '34, study says

Sunday

Nov 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2009 at 10:41 PM

CHICAGO -- Even if the percentage of Americans who are obese stays the same, diabetes cases will nearly double in the nation in the next 25 years, and the cost of treating the disease will almost triple, according to a new study by researchers based at the University of Chicago.

CHICAGO -- Even if the percentage of Americans who are obese stays the same, diabetes cases will nearly double in the nation in the next 25 years, and the cost of treating the disease will almost triple, according to a new study by researchers based at the University of Chicago.

The study, published Friday in the journal Diabetes Care, predicted that the number of people with diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes will climb from almost 24 million this year to about 44 million in 2034. In the same period, diabetes-related treatment costs are expected to increase from $113 billion a year to $336 billion in 2007 dollars.

Alarmingly, Medicare spending on diabetes is

expected to jump from

$45 billion to $171 billion and could exceed current projections for all Medicare costs, the researchers said. Much of the increase in cases and costs will be driven by aging baby boomers, who number 77 million.

"It's a combination of the increasing numbers of people who have diabetes, along with the cost of treating diabetes, that gives us these frightening numbers," said study co-author Dr. Elbert Huang, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. "The study reinforces the importance of public-health efforts to prevent diabetes -- by transforming the way we eat and increasing the amount of exercise we do -- and emphasizes the importance of finding new ways of treating diabetes efficiently."

Huang also said the study's findings could be considered conservative because the researchers' estimates are based on stable obesity rates.

Diabetes costs are rising in part because the disease is striking people at younger ages, which can mean more time to develop expensive complications. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, amputations and end-stage kidney disease.